News: 1586153923

Just a quick heads up for anyone who thinks this is a conspiracy theory about a conspiracy theory I can assure you it is not. Where I work I have spoken to two separate people who actually believe this and when asked one of them said that the last two pandemics were caused by 3g and 4g. I asked them how the fuck we had mobile phones in 1918 but it seems they were talking about the pandemics that weren't actually pandemics even though the dates were way off. If you need to set someone straight I find the proposition that these frequencies were in use prior to take up by mobile communications to be quite a persuasive option.

Maybe this 5g rubbish has been created to identify gullible idiots by some Cambridge Analytical type company. Who knows? The truth is out there.

Faecebook users. What does anyone expect?

There are even some pseudo scientific ideas going around about the effect of mmWave transmissions on the immune system. They forget to mention that no infrastructure or phones using this part of the spectrum have been rolled out.

@werdsmith

mmWave technology has been and is being used today - but the application is quite specific. In fact, mmWave technology is used by mobile operators, too - for backhaul from mobile masts that don't have fibre. The links use highly focused 'pencil beams' and equipment is placed where there is no physical obstruction, as this would interrupt or degrade the transmission.

For example, V-band and E-band services in particular can be used to transmit data wirelessly at Gigabit speeds. What may surprise you is that links like this using compliant equipment only need to be registered with Ofcom (so they know where it has been deployed), but the actual deployment is not regulated (i.e. you don't need to ask for permission).

Still no health issue, however...

I blame E.T. (just because I have always wanted to use that icon)!

@flak

These people are suggesting 60GHz.

I think Bats fly through your pencil beams, getting fried and mutated, splash down in yer soup and, Voila! , Wuhan flu.

Careful or this story will go viral!

Maybe this 5g rubbish has been created to identify gullible idiots [1]https://newsthump.com/2020/04/05/5g-conspiracy-theories-all-part-of-secret-plot-by-the-government-to-identify-simpletons/

[1] https://newsthump.com/2020/04/05/5g-conspiracy-theories-all-part-of-secret-plot-by-the-government-to-identify-simpletons/

For those of us old enough to remember the rather fine 'Beiderbecke Tapes' (BBC aeons ago), a conclusion was that the leak about a nuclear dump in the Yorkshire Dales was a smokescreen to disguise something else. Fiction travels... of course, you have to have the odd belief that governments can maintain a conspiracy!

(was that someone on the dakr side I heard sniggering?)

Upvoted for the mention of “The Beiderbecke Tapes”, a bloody fine, entertaining piece of TV which had slid away into the hinterlands of what I laughingly call my memory, and which I’m pleased to be reminded of...

The Beiderbecke Trilogy was an ITV production.

Produced by those Yorkshire TV types.

There have been plenty of anti 3G/4G/5G campaigners for as long as I can remember now..

Browse YouTube for it, there's plenty of people sleeping in foil lined sleeping bags with a signal strength meter to confirm they are "safe" .

There have been some...vaguely plausible lab tests on rats, that may have highlighted something to do with 3G and heart nerve failure / cancer (with the suggestion the heart is quite sensitive to EM waves, not an appalling hypothesis), although frankly I didn't read the study properly and I'm not sure the results had been replicated, certainly not on humans AFAIK. For those tests I think they used max power 3G for 9 hours a day.

To be honest though, browse the YouTube videos, it's quite clear these people are fringe lunatics and/or quite gullible, some are stoned hippies, often trying to sell 4G signal detectors and similar crap.

If you want a 5G "conspiracy", I'm sure GCHQ will love the increased accuracy of 5G location tracking, but that's more to do with having more antennas.

> If you want a 5G "conspiracy", I'm sure GCHQ will love the increased accuracy of 5G location tracking, but that's more to do with having more antennas.

Also, 5G specs allow far more individual devices to connect to mast, making it suitable for swarms of connected sensors and gadgets (' Internet if Things). Older cellular protocols carried a large overhead for each connected device regardless of how little bandwidth it required.

Valid cancerns about the erosion of privacy due to 5G are what some highsreet anti-5G campaigners fell back on after I remonstrated with them last year. It's just cretinous that they use an argument with no merit as a back door to bring attention to a valid privacy issue - they're just muddying the waters and damaging by their association important issues (conversations about society and privacy, climate change etc) that actually do have evidence behind them.

PS for a giggle, this was a video a friend sent me a few months back. Check out his upgraded "anti 5G" Glastonbury bedroom.

https://youtu.be/jL9PISqLqUc

This stuff isn't new. Power lines, TV transmitters, WiFi, etc.

> Maybe this 5g rubbish has been created to identify gullible idiots by some Cambridge Analytical type company. Who knows?

Russia Today ran a few disinformation spots last year linking 5G to health concerns. I can't find RT's article*, but RT was reported on by the BBC and the NY Times.

The MO of RT is to not to convince you of any one narrative, but just to spread uncertainty and doubt. So, searching for 'Russia Today 5G' brings up a headline about how the boxer Amir Khan believes that the Coronavirus is manmade and is designed to test 5G.

Useful idiots all over the damned place.

Do those people believe the earth is flat too? Or that vaccines cause autism? Or that the moon landing was faked?

Sadly, yes.

Corona discharge is a well-known phenomenon associated with high-voltage systems. The word that people are erroneously grabbing hold of, and linking with 5G is "ionisation".

A nice idea but far too complicated for these morons.

Well that's just peachy, it's like people who've seen the "centennial recurrent plague of the '20s" meme have decided to rekindle other traditions, starting with [1]destroying their own radio infrastructure ;).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleiwitz_incident

If I thought this was right, with his voice all sombre and timid.

I did the only decent thing one could do in reply, which was laugh into his face, the idea so warped & dumb it tickles

My boss, an IT guy gone managerial, used to (when we were still working at the office) routinely unplug the wi-fi AP over his head because he "didn't want radiation around him like that". I've tried to reason with him but utterly failed, as expected. So I just plugged it again when he wasn't around.

Yeah, got a load of flat earthers where I work. These are highly intelligent engineers but still they are gullible as fuck.

One of them still will not drink milk here in the UK in case it might contain Chernobyl fall out from 1986!!

One of them does wear a hat (foil lined) because you never know!

One of them now believes in these 5G masts spreading the Corona Virus and has asked to be moved in the office so he can't see the nearest mast 200m away and therefore be safe...

Dreamt up in the fevered imagination of some minor non-tech party official.

It's the Thin Edge of the Wedge to soften us up and to justify bringing-in Censorship to stifle and shutdown independent News Reporting on Social Media so that only the Official Approved version of Events is propagated.

Propaganda pure and simple. Don’t Feed the BorisBots.

> ... independent News Reporting on Social Media ...

Yeah, rrrright.

Is that you AMFM?

It's either our favourite martian or Bob's caps lock key has given up at last and he has to use shift like the rest of us.

Compared to the Scare Capitalization used in the message I replied to Bob's screaming all-capitals appear outright civilized to me.

Propaganda pure and simple

Not really. Anyone with any sense knows that the Coronavirus is punishment from God for legalising abortions and same sex marriages, well at least according to DUP councilor John Carson, who somehow also seems to think he's Noah.

And anyway, if you think that the frequencies used in 5G transmissions spread the virus, there's a foolproof way of curing yourself using a 50Hz frequency generator that we all have in our own homes! Get 2 teaspoons and grab hold of the spoon end, one in each hand. Then, making sure that the power switch is on, push the handles into the lower 2 holes of the nearest mains socket...

Simples!

I think you might have the wrong comments thread. These kind of suggestions are usually reserved for BOFH comments :)

And an SNP MSP (btw I do generally support the party living in this neck of the woods) is encouraging more people into churches! Is this a suicide wish - given the probable ages - or a conspiracy to remove older people from Scottish society? Anyway, my Mum (who is a regular goer for one reason or the other0 was forthright - "bugger that for a game of soldiers - the eejit". Actually she was ruder but I thing even El Reg might not appreciate the language.

In my experience, any text that has Scare Capitals is 100% bullshit. I have yet to see a single piece of text, no matter the medium or the author, that violates this rule.

In Sweden the instigator turned out to be a 64 year old fruitcake. Contrary to what some people think, we have plenty of ill-informed poorly educated people with a desire for self publicity even in the best educated countries. And the UK is no longer that.

[1]UK discussed joint EU plan to buy Covid-19 medical supplies, say officials

So, now that Gove has dismissed it, it's probably gained more credence.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/30/uk-discussed-joint-eu-plan-to-buy-covid-19-medical-supplies-say-officials

From that article: "Last week Downing Street claimed that it failed to take part in an EU scheme to source life-saving ventilators and other kit to treat coronavirus because it accidentally missed the deadline."

Under normal circumstances this would be incredibly funny.

What was so stupid was that an explanation "we don't think it will help" would have been both adequate in the circumstance and pleased his Brexit supporters. Lying about emails going missing was just feckin incompetent!

Every time I see the slimy little man on TV I have the immediate urge to go and wash my hands for 20 seconds.

Wow! You like him that much?

He's the reason I go home with airline sickbags from any flights I have. They're handy for those sudden moments where he's on the radio or pops up on the TV.

Thankfully I read this article on the loo so no need for one on this occasion, and I'm mercifully close to the toothpaste for when the retching stops.

No real comment other than the observation that two people who sympathise with Gove visit these pages!

Probably "Sarah Vine" looking for something to be outraged about. Or someone else on the Mail doing a search for anything that could put a positive spin on "5G radiation is interfering with our body fluids!"

Mind you, I haven't got coronavirus (yet) and we haven't got 5G yet so...

It's crazy all this hand washing, I've even started doing it after going to the toilet.

Well, toilet paper is hard to get these days.

The Daily Mail is still being printed I believe.

You would allow the Daily Mail anywhere near your reproductive organs? Unless you first have your butler iron it on a high setting, you are braver than I am.

In my view, 5G IS a global conspiracy - one designed to entirely exsanguinate wallets, leaving its victims feeling weak and woozy as they wonder what the hell they have to show for jumping on the latest voyage of the Planned Obsolescence Express, aka HMS Emperor's New Clothes. I ain't wasting no perfectly good tinfoil protecting myself from 5G, I'll use it the way The Cosmos intended, for making chickens extra crispy.

We, the members of the mmWave Department of Globex, are proud to announce the successful completion of our mmWave COVID-19 virus delivery system. This achievement has been made possible by exploiting several zero-day flaws in Huawei 5G equipment.

Hank Scorpio sends his regards and hopes that the West Coast will enjoy the new order.

Regards,

Hank Morgan

Chief Program Scientist/Director of Technical Staff

ps: I've told Hank that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers should not be under consideration. Hope he understands and that the San Diego Chargers would be cooler. That lightning bolt helmet and all.

I've talked to people who've said that they actually believe that the 5G 'rays' suck the oxygen out of the air. And then I've seen stuff where people believe that the whole thing was engineered so that when we get the vaccine, it won't be a vaccine at all, but little 'GPS Chips' that are activated by 5G!

This 5G nonsense has been around long before the coronavirus outbreak. People believed that there were 5G satellites destroying the ozone layer, that the rays destroy your haemoglobin - and any sort of nonsense you could make up.

These are the same sort of people who, in medieval times, though that so-and-so became ill because some woman didn't go to church when the moon was full, and happened to have a black cat, so they burned her as a witch. It's a medieval mindset exacerbated by gullibility, having too much time to think, and being scared. I'm not defending them at all, but knowing the reasons why could lead to a way of curbing this dangerous nonsense and nipping it in the bud.

I know people who do bizarre things like turn their routers or mobiles off at night, so this stuff is more widespread then you think.

" ... burned her as a witch ... "

Alternatively the pandemic would be seen as a punishment sent by some deity for the unacceptable behaviour of the population at large.

Such visitations could be countered either by the villagers undertaking some farcical aquatic ceremony, or in the case of high-ranking members of society, showering endowments on to the local priests and their church.

The outcome was generally the same.

Smarter people would however send the local priests to intervene on their behalf ...

"Look I think it would be better if you went and had a word with Thor yourselves as you keep telling us he listens to you. The top of the sacred mountain looks like an ideal venue for this - the storm clouds are already gathering there. The rest of us will watch you from down here.

Oh and don't forget to take your ceremonial twenty-foot bronze spears of office with you."

Actually, people are kind of doing that too. I don't know any 5G nutters (I think, mental note to ask on FB and remove those who are...), although I have genuinely seen deranged posters up in the wild, but what I do see are people who think this is somehow the planet's way of taking revenge on us for stuff (global warming, pollution, eating meat, whatever personally annoys you). While I'm sure this is all quite good for the environment, that's just not how disease works, and this new-age-pseudo-karma I've even seen from people who are otherwise pretty scientific in their outlooks.

(If disease worked that way then you'd really have to wonder what the hell tasmanian devils did to deserve the transmissible face-eating cancer, or what any number of invertebrates were doing to bring cordyceps militaris upon themselves.)